As cold cases go, this one's a doozy. The world's first Methodist college, one of Maryland's earliest institutions of higher education, burned in 1795. Newspapers at the time said it was arson. The governor offered a $1,000 reward - a lot of money then - to catch the perpetrator. But no one was ever charged.
Enter Bonnie McCubbin, an anthropology and history major at St. Mary's College of Maryland, who graduated in May. More than two centuries after the mysterious fire, the 22-year-old from Bel Air tracked down artifacts excavated decades ago at the site in Harford County where Cokesbury College once stood. She pored over historical documents, journals and letters of people involved with the school, looking for clues.
On Sunday, McCubbin plans to present the findings of her senior-year research project at Cokesbury Memorial United Methodist Church in Abingdon, which stands next to the site of the short-lived college.
Her conclusion: The eight-year-old college was burned by a dissident Methodist minister who had been feuding with his denomination's leaders and had publicly questioned the church's involvement in running a school.
"I won't say I'm 100 percent positive that James O'Kelly is the arsonist," McCubbin said of her prime suspect.
The case against him is circumstantial. Indeed, the trail is so cold now that it's virtually impossible to prove by modern evidentiary standards that the fire was intentional. Authorities never said at the time why they believed it was arson, and the bits of melted glass and charred wood recovered in a 1968 archaeological dig were inconclusive.
"If you're trying to go back in time, it's a little hard to put the pieces back together," McCubbin said.
Not that she didn't try. McCubbin looked into the circumstances of the college's demise with a doggedness that would make any gumshoe proud, according to Julie King, her project adviser and an associate professor of anthropology.
"The only line of investigation she left unturned was the Ouija board," said King, a good history detective herself. Last year she was part of a team that found Charles County's long-lost original courthouse.
St. Mary's students are encouraged to undertake independent projects in their senior year, King said, but McCubbin tackled her investigation with an enthusiasm that was infectious.
"Bonnie has a way of making things sound very interesting, and this was," King said. "She drew me in. ... She's pretty convinced who did it."
